Most Extensive Overview of Michael Schmidt’s Work to Date at Haus der Kunst

MUNICH.- With the exhibition of photographs by Michael Schmidt, the Haus der Kunst presents another formative position in contemporary photography. Works by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Robert Adams, Lee Friedlander, Andreas Gursky and William Eggleston have already been shown as part of this exhibition series. With 390 original photographs “Grey as Colour” is the most extensive overview of Michael Schmidt’s work to date. A third of the pieces are new works or – like “89/90″, which only existed as working [...]

From Boston to Singapore – A New Director for the Asian Civilisations Museum

BOSTON, MA.- The National Heritage Board (NHB) of Singapore welcomes Dr Alan Chong as the new Director of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM), one of the five national museums of Singapore. The announcement concludes an intensive 12-month worldwide search since news of the retirement of Dr Kenson Kwok, the museum’s former Director, was announced in 2008. Currently the William and Lia Poorvu curator at the renowned Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Dr Alan Chong succeeds Dr Kenson Kwok who [...]

Art Fair Tokyo Announces Takahiro Kaneshima as New Executive Director

TOKYO.- The Art Fair Tokyo Executive Committee announces that Misa Shin, Executive Director of Art Fair Tokyo since 2005, will be stepping down at the end of May 2010. Shin has directed a total of four editions of Art Fair Tokyo, since her appointment as Executive Director in November 2005. During this time, her aims have been to encourage the development of an art market in Japan and to create a truly international art fair in Tokyo. Under each year [...]

Getty Puts on View Painting Rescued from Abruzzo Earthquake

LOS ANGELES, CA.- David Bomford, acting director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, announced the installation of The Madonna and Child with Scenes from the Life of Christ and the Virgin (The Beffi Triptych) in the Getty Museum’s permanent collection galleries over the summer months. The painting is the first work of art to be transported out of Abruzzo, Italy, in the aftermath of the violent earthquake that struck the region on April 6, 2009. One of the most important [...]

Alex Katz Presents a Major Work to the Brandhorst Foundation

MUNICH.- By now it is hard to imagine the Kunstareal without it: the Museum Brandhorst, inaugurated at an official ceremony on 18 May, 2009, takes positive stock of its first year: 345 000 visitors streamed to Munich’s new highlight with its characteristic, brightly-coloured ceramic rods – and the interest shows no signs of letting up. 2 255 guided tours with some 39 300 participants are one more clear confirmation of the extent to which the museum has become an established [...]

California Attorney General Supports Claim for Art Seized in WWII

LOS ANGELES.- California’s attorney general filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday in support of a Connecticut woman who wants a Pasadena museum to return two 500-year-old paintings seized by Nazis during World War II. Attorney General Jerry Brown filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking the court to consider an appeal by Marei von Saher of Greenwich, Conn., who sued the Norton Simon Museum for the paintings in 2007. The pair of 16th century wood panels by German artist [...]

With Disabled Security System Thief Steals Five Paintings from Paris Museum of Modern Art

PARIS (AP).- A lone thief stole five paintings possibly worth hundreds of millions of euros, including major works by Picasso and Matisse, in a brazen overnight heist at a Paris modern art museum, police and prosecutors said Thursday. The paintings disappeared early Thursday from the Paris Museum of Modern Art, across the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower. Investigators have cordoned off the museum, in one of the French capital’s most tourist-frequented neighborhoods. The museum’s security system was disabled, and [...]

Victorian Paintings on View at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

SYDNEY.- The exhibition Victorian visions presents an impressive collection of some 45 paintings, watercolours, drawings and sculptures by some of the luminaries of Victorian art, including works by Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones, Leighton, Poynter, Watts and Waterhouse. The collection has been assembled by John Schaeffer, Australia’s most passionate and highly respected collector of 19th-century European art. The exhibition is on display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 20 May to 29 August 2010. This is the first [...]

Guggenheim Exhibition Celebrates Late Painter Kenneth Noland

NEW YORK, NY.- In honor of the late Kenneth Noland (b. April 10, 1924, Asheville, N.C.; d. January 5, 2010, Port Clyde, Maine), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Kenneth Noland, 1924–2010: A Tribute, on view in the level 4 Thannhauser Gallery from May 21 to June 20. One of the great American abstract painters of the second half of the twentieth century, Noland had his first major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 1977. Throughout a career that spanned [...]

Romain Bernini Debuts His Work in the U.S. at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art

NEW YORK, NY.- Priska C. Juschka presents Romain Bernini’s first solo exhibition in the United States. His beautifully haunting paintings reflect a state of entropy, Robert Smithson’s idea of the ruins — a dystopian sociological landscape born of the debris of post modern societies, disillusioned with the merits of industrialism and the idea of a utopian state. His paintings encompass a range of ambiguities, drawing their audience into a foreboding landscape, simultaneously hovering between the familiar and the unknown, the [...]

IVAM Offers Bernar Venet His First Show in a Spanish Museum

VALENCIA.- The first exhibition in a Spanish museum dedicated to Bernar Venet gathers 53 works and a representative selection of the conceptual work developed by Bernar Venet during different phases of his artistic career. Part of his work was characterized by the use of poor materials, new media such as the video, the sound recording and the photography in order to document performances and actions and the advent of unpredictable situations. Works such as Performance dans les détritus (Performance within [...]

Tlaltecuhtli Colossal Monolith was Moved to Templo Mayor Museum

MEXICO CITY.- The Tlaltecuhtli monolith discovered near Templo Mayor Archaeological Site in 2006 was moved in May 17th 2010 to Templo Mayor Museum, where it is to be presented for the first time as part of the Moctezuma II, Time and Destiny of a Ruler exhibition. The colossal sculpture was relocated in a maneuver that used state-of-the-art technology and the work of several persons during more than 31 hours. It was moved from the Ajaracas plot to the museum using [...]

Christie’s Swiss Art: Masterpieces of Swiss Art from 1800 to 2010

ZURICH.- Christie’s 2010 Swiss Art sale presents 226 lots of exquisite Swiss art dating from the early 19th century up until the present day, ranging from classics including Ferdinand Hodler, Giovanni Giacometti and Félix Vallotton to young contemporaries such as Pippilotti Rist, Christoph Büchel and Loredana Sperini. Estimates range from SFr 3,000 – for the small scale painting, Irgendeine Szene in der Welt B/Any scene in the world B (2010) by the young Swiss-born Patrick Graf – to SFr 2.5 [...]

Donor Surprises Florida Museum with a Painting by Georgia O’Keeffe

ST. PETERSBURG, FL.- An anonymous donor has surprised a Florida museum with a valuable gift: a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. “Grey Hills Painted Red, New Mexico” was hung on a gallery wall at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg on Tuesday. Museum director John Schloder told the St. Petersburg Times a woman called and asked if the museum wanted to see her O’Keeffe painting, and things progressed from there. The donor doesn’t want to be named, but she told [...]

Hirshhorn Present First U.S. Retrospective of Yves Klein’s Work in Nearly 30 Years

WASHINGTON, DC.- One of the 20th century’s most influential artists, Yves Klein (French, b. Nice, 1928; d. Paris, 1962) took the European art scene by storm in a prolific but brief career that lasted only from 1954 to 1962. “Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers,” on view at the Hirshhorn May 20 through Sept. 12, 2010, is the first major retrospective of the artist’s work in the United States since 1982. Co-curated by the Hirshhorn’s deputy director and chief [...]